Vertigo Fear Shadows

Vertigo Fear Shadows

At the edge of a shadow cast by the neighbor's oak,
sun shines on my face, a breeze rustles my hair
and the shadow of the oak shifts and wriggles, restless
and hungry, withdrawing and then approaching
my bare toes, over and over while the whole dancing
shadow with it's patches of sun slides slowly closer.
Shadows of leaves, shadows of branches, shadows
of baby acorns nestled among the leaves.  Shadows
of robins passing each other with worms and insects,
shadows of their babies opening wide their mouths.
Such a chorus of pleading.  Wingbeats, then stillness.
A touch of cold startles me.  I look down to see darkness
on my hands, isolated and with no visible source
from the tree.  The deep, cloudless sky throws no shadows,
but the shadow on my wrist expands toward my heart.
Compelled to drink from that well of night, I bend toward
my hands.  A black wave engulfs me.  The earth tilts, the sky
spins and the tree lurches.  I smell bruised grass, damp soil.
Feel tiny pebbles mashed into my cheek.  Taste salt and iron.
Sweating and cold, I watch the jonquils and tulips leap jaggedly
in the garden.  Jump and twist spasmodically.  On my knees,
my body curls in Bala-asana, the child pose, and I close
my eyes to still the jumping.  The darkness
behind my eyes turns and jerks raggedly.  I breathe
slowly.  Feel a passing chill, another shadow.
I open my eyes to see a vulture circling, its shadow
passing over me again and again.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090512-1319-1b, 090512-1229-1st

NOTE:  This did NOT happen as written, but is a combination of the earlier experience of vertigo with the later experience of the shifting shadows and the mysterious one on my hand.

This would not format correctly below. See it correctly formatted here.

Friends


OK, watch this; see if I don't win. I detest work
but I need a milkshake. Ready? Here goes:

I saunter in the kitchen door.

“I love you, little Sweetness and Light,” my mother says.

“Whatever,” I answer, and keep on walking.

Hear the grump in my voice? She deserves it.
First, I’m not little. I’m a teenager, and I tower
over her. OK, only by an inch or two,
but she’s no dwarf.

Anyway, I’m not little, I’m not sweet,
and I generate no light, except
perhaps toward any witches who see auras.
Mom might; she’s that weird.

I stroll toward the stairs a few steps, then turn back
and give her a hug.

"OK, what do you want?” She asks.

“Friendship,” I say.

She guesses right, of course.
I hug her mostly only when I want something.
The rest of the time, she vanishes into the background
or disappears off my radar entirely.
She knows it, too.

I do want something. I want a LOT. I want money.
I want to stay up all night and sleep all day.
I want to eat candy, drink soda, play video games
and watch TV. Hang out with my friends.
I want no school, homework, baths, clean clothes.
I want to refuse to practice the piano, clean my room
clean the bird cage and bury the compost.
Fat chance; but if I play my cards right . . .

I hug her again, stroke her hair. “Friend,” I say.
“Milkshake,” I say. “Real friends
make their friends milkshakes.
You’re my friend, right Mom?”

“Oh,” she says, “you want to make me a milkshake,
how sweet. You charm me with your generosity.”

“Awwwwww . . .” I release a big sigh
and roll my best sad puppy eyes at her,
but already, she hauls out the milk
ice-cream and sugar.

“Chocolate,” I yell, as I dash upstairs.

Don’t tell Mom, but I often create a perfect milkshake.
I just hate to wash the blender.
Now I can leap into Runescape and see if Simon
or George killed any monsters yet.
And she can wash the blender.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

090504-1157-2e, 090503-2149-1c, 090503-1911-1st of this version (earlier draft/version was a short prose poem)

earlier draft below:

Friends

OK, watch this; see if I don't win. I need a milkshake

but detest work. I saunter in the kitchen door.

"I love you, little Sweetness and Light," my mother says.

"Whatever," I answer, and keep on walking.

I hear the grump in my voice, but she deserves it.

First, I'm not little. I'm a teenager, and I tower

over her. OK, only by an inch or two,

but she's no dwarf.

Anyway, I'm not little, I'm not sweet,

and I generate no light, except

perhaps toward any witches who see auras.

Mom might; she's that weird.

I stroll toward the stairs a few steps, then turn back

and give her a hug.

"OK, what do you want?" She asks.

"Friendship," I say. She guesses right, of course.

I hug her mostly only when I want something.

The rest of the time, she vanishes into the background

or disappears off my radar entirely.

She knows it, too.

I do want something. I want a LOT. I want money.

I want to stay up all night and sleep all day.

I want to eat candy, drink soda, play video games

and watch TV. Hang out with my friends.

I want no school, homework, baths, clean clothes.

I want to refuse to practice the piano, clean my room

clean the bird cage and bury the compost.

Fat chance; but if I play my cards right . . .

I hug her again, stroke her hair. "Friend," I say.

"Milkshake," I say. "Real friends

make their friends milkshakes.

You're my friend, right Mom?"

"Oh," she says, "you want to make me a milkshake,

how sweet. You charm me with your generosity."

"Awwwwww . . ." I release a big sigh

and roll my best sad puppy eyes at her,

but already, she hauls out the milk

ice-cream and sugar.

"Chocolate," I yell, as I dash upstairs.

Don't tell Mom, but I create a perfect milkshake.

I just hate to wash the blender.

Now I can leap into Runescape and see if Simon

or George killed any monsters yet.

And Mom can wash the blender.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

090504-0340-2c, 090503-2149-1c, 090503-1911-1^st of this version (earlier draft/version was a shorter prose poem)

NaPoWriMo #19

I spent a lot of time trying to get this to format correctly on the blog, but it would not. So Sorry. Wahn! Waste of time, too!

Conversing with a leaf

for Class tonight:

Conversing with a Leaf

Like a fledgling, it quivers. Though dead and brown,
cracked and dried, it shakes its thin wings. In scratches
and wiggles, it talks with the wind, then speaks to me
with unconcealed enthusiasm. I look around to be sure
you're not watching. If you were watching, you might think
I've lost my wits. Perhaps you'd be right.
I converse with a leaf, though I utter not a word, but instead,
shake my arms with quick spasms and flutters like a baby bird
begging for food. I open wide my mouth—a foolish sight,
you'd surely think, for one so large, without beak or feathers,
so decidedly un-bird-like. When I smile at the leaf, would you
think me an idiot? I ask the leaf for nothing, but thank it
and the wind for reminding me to look. Yes, spring comes.
Pausing in my tasks, delighted by its long-awaited warmth,
I raise my arms to the sun, rejoice in the purple glory of hyacinths
and blousy yellow jonquils that burst from under last year's
narrow, snow-blanched leaves. In grape-bark, grass
and mud nests, eggs hatch. Cardinals and robins
will soon fledge. You're not watching, are you?
Because the morning light and warmth seems ample
reason to dance around the talking leaf. I fling my arms,
twirl toward the promise of lilacs and the sweet breath
of hyacinths and flap and jiggle wildly for all the season's
fetal but upcoming baby birds.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
^this line, and everything below the line, is not part of the
poem—note to self, some drafts of this were not printed!
090427-1231-4a, 090426-1137-3a, 090425-2148-2e, 090424-2043-1g, 090424-0930-1st
Sun could paint my face with light and I might enjoy jonquils, hyacinths
and choruses of spring birdsong if I stayed outdoors. But instead, I go inside
and struggle with recalcitrant and unforgiving words. Woe closes
like darkness, cloys like stale air, on the poet who cannot or will not
relax and savor clusters of many-stamened speckled Hellebores
but carries experience away from its source
and ponders the language around it endlessly in the dimness
of her study. I am torn between the need to record and arrange these words
and the desire to stroke satin petals, while outside, sun shines
on newly opened scarlet and yellow tulips.

Started from the following journal excerpt: Conversing with a Leaf,
from my journal 090424: Through heaps of fallen lanceolate leaves,
bleached almost white by snow and sun, the neighbors' hyacinths press,
purple glories making their way without the aid of gardeners. And
next door, pink ones, like small fluffs of cotton candy on green
sticks, carefully tended. I incline my caring toward the wilder ones.
The air is cold but the sun is warm. On the sidewalk, a dead brown
oak leaf trembles in the wind, leaping about gently without blowing
away, reminding me of a baby bird, begging for food. If you had been
watching, you would have seen me speaking to the leaf, though uttering
not a word.

A Trick of Light (NaPoWriMo #18 Word Salad)

A Trick of Light

When her compass of shadows points only to darkness,
a rumble slashes behind her, a torn crack of sound.
Imagine the girl, hair brushing her waist, gown hitched up
and clinging damply to her skin as she wades through
the tall wildflowers that brush her bare legs with dew.
She turns in the meadow, resplendent with reds from the low sun,
curious and afraid. She holds the purple asters and goldenrods
close to her chest, flowers that evermore will signify the end
of summer, half the end, in a way, of everything,
but she doesn't know that yet. Not quite yet. She sees the horses
first, black, green-eyed, drooling spittle, dancing in their harnesses.
They paw at the air and rock; sparks fly from their hooves.
She sees the driver next, dark, handsome, old. Then young,
a sort of trick of the light. He is already in front of her
before she thinks to bolt. He seizes her, scoops her with an arm
around her waist, just as she begins to scream. Her head falls back,
flung on her thin neck by the upward rush as the chariot spins
and turns downward again. Dangling like this, she sees
one last glimpse of the darkening meadow, the flowers
a sea of colors, the stars whirl, the moon sets precipitously
at the edge of the chasm. The Underland seethes with the dead.
Their eyes and skin glow greenish, like foxfire or fireflies,
giving the vast caverns an eerie light. Creepy. In the throne room,
Hades makes diamonds for her by crushing coal in his bare hands,
a nifty trick, but Persephone will not stop crying. When he touches her,
the flowers blacken in her hands. She calls and calls for her mother.
He offers rubies, emeralds, pork chops, polenta, chocolate. Of course,
the pomegranate stops the tears. Her mother had fed them to her
as a child, one seed at a time, but when Hades feeds her his seed,
all trace of sweetness disappears from her tongue.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090420-1141-2a; 090419-2016 1st completed 1st draft

the fractal flame was made using Apophysis.

for napowrimo #18: word salad

confined

Confined

Fawn lilies, pale in the shadows of trees, open their throats

and call the bees. Bees, drunk with sleep and winter,

stagger from the hive. The hive hums with its own morning.

Spring caresses the forest lightly. If you hurry, you will see nothing

but the dark still-sleeping trunks of trees. But stop. Place your ear

to the trunk and listen. Sap thrums in its veins, singing

to the buds who hum softly as they gather their new leaves

to unfurl. And in a spot of branch-filtered sun, the first

mourning cloak butterfly fans slow wings among the fallen leaves.

You might mistake it for one of them if you didn't pause and look.

But I cannot look. Confined indoors, I miss the birthday

of the forest: the doe, licking her newborn, pressing

with her nose to balance it as it wobbles toward

its first breakfast. Picture me longing, aching; see me imagining

instead of watching, as, stepping among the white lilies

that bear its name, in a moment never to be repeated,

the newborn fawn takes its fleeting first steps.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

for BB

090419-1153-1c; 090418-1916-1st completed draft

for the prompt, "missing something or someone or something missing" for NaPoWri Mo #17 National Poetry Month at ReadWritePoem.

The fawn in the composit is by Berrybird. The word layout is by Wordle (from my poem). I took the trees and the fawn lily and made the composit.

Making it on my Own (Word Trails)

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge #16 Word trails, for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Making it on my Own (Word Trails)

Writing as I walk, I follow word trails through a forest of thought,
each word linked mutably to a host of images and memories.
An Icabod Crane tree hangs over the path: twisted. The word twisted
links to broken, broken to shattered, shattered to glass
and to my heart, that old saw, that cliché that still feels so rich and real
to me, so true, in spite of centuries of overuse. It's difficult
to be a poet when you love clichés. My glass heart shatters from anger,
from a hand or fist or knife, smashed against a face, face links to fly,
fly escape bird wing fast fancy fallow Farrow Darcy.
I liked that name, Darcy. But I could not name
a daughter Darcy because of Darcy Farrow, though any name
must link to some tragedy or other. A good name ruined.
Alicia was another. I'd chosen it as a possibility until Robert Garrow
raped and killed Alicia Houk and abandoned her body along the trail,
the trail I walked to school each day. A beautiful girl left all winter
under the snow, no a trail of words, but a trail of horror. Strange
what we remember and what we forget. A trail of memories.
Reading old letters, I discover that I wrote my parents daily, twice
daily, often, after I left home. Such an outpouring of confusion,
a plethora of words, forbidden words, like fire hunger beg drugs,
like robbed, beaten, kicked, evicted, like plethora, a word my teacher
says not to use in poetry. Much of what I wrote my parents
I forgot, but occasionally, a favorite story surfaces, suddenly revisited,
shiny in the moment of it's recording, fresh with excitement
and pain or matter-of-factly written as commonplace,
two of us cramming into the turnstile together because we only
had one subway token between us. The half-rotted fruit
we pulled from the dumpster behind the grocers, devoured, grateful
for any sustenance. Sitting on the fire escape to get even the slightest
hint of breeze. "Don't send money," I wrote repeatedly
to my parents, "if I can't make it on my own, I'll come home."
Unlike Darcy Farrow, unlike Alicia Houk, I made it home eventually.
Boyfriend lover husband anger fist hit bleed abuse. Finally, escape.
Twisted, broken, shattered, home. I made it home,
if that breathing but mangled girl ringing my parents' doorbell
was still me.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090417-2124-1c; 090417-1641-1st (complete) draft

word image created on Wordle.

White Duck on a Green Pond

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge #13, a word list, for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

White Duck in a Green Pool

The Clinton River makes an acute turn, chews
up the banks and topples trees whose roots hang fibrous
and ungrounded into the green water. Mallards, quacking
and grunting, slide along the current like pucks
in an air hockey game, smooth on the wrinkled green surface,
interrupting the reflection of willows and phragmites
with their shiny blue and green heads. When the river cuts
back far enough, it will rejoin itself, abandoning
this U-shaped oxbow to stagnate like an old appendix.
Already, the trail caves into the river and disappears,
almost impassable between the plunge to water
and the thicket of brambles. Already,
old oxbows ring islands of trashy willows and weeds
where Canada geese nest, the males hissing,
trailing intruders, attacking with wing blows,
with the heavy thump of breastbone against neck and shoulder.
No one in this dismal place is jubilant, but the white ducks,
resting on the sandbar opposite the bend of the river preen
their spotless feathers with bright orange smiles.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090416-1025-2a, 090413-1730-1b

Okay, something a little more cheerful.

Flash in the Pan

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge #8, for the "Old Flames prompt," for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Flash in the Pan

Barbara screamed, pointed at me, and everyone turned to look.

She screamed and screamed, pointed and flailed. Her face turned

scarlet. The thirty children who had gathered around me gaped at her,

all of us standing as still as if we were staring at Medusa, until my boss

found someone else to teach them and secreted me away with Barbara.

I shrank. Disappeared into a knot of thorns that tightened around me.

In the news, only that morning, a crazed wife had killed her husband

and his lover. But in private, Barbara's maniacal frenzy abated;

she spoke quietly. Fingers released their threatened hold on my neck

and I took a breath and another.

I still wanted her to disappear and take Gordon with her. Forever.

Before our first kiss, I'd asked him: "Are you married,

are you engaged, are you in a relationship?"

"No, no, no," he said, and he lied. I believed him. He wore no ring.

I tend to trust. I'd welcomed him

into my home, my heart and then my bed. But they were engaged,

and then they married. After he lied,

after he cheated, they married. He probably blamed it on me.

If I were her, I'd have been as angry, but never

would have married Gordon. She told me, in tears:

he'd cheated before. Said he saw other woman

when he was with me, too, Cheated us both.

Cheat once, cheat again. I so would not have married

Gordon that he was the first step toward a vow of celibacy

One year, then another and then a third. And on to ten. Barbara married

a cheat. I married silence, peace and a spacious

empty bed.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

090415-2212-3b; 090414-1115-2b; 090413-2252-1d; 090313-1602-1st

This poem has long lines which don't translate well into blog format.

NaPoWriMo prompt from ReadWritePoem #15: “Instead of”

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, for prompt #15, "Instead of," for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Instead of

writing this poem, I stare at the ceiling remembering how I used to watch movies on a blank wall, sometimes with a projector, and sometimes just staring at nothing but white. White sang and rippled into color, color meshed into patterns, creating people who often danced and sang. No one else could see those private movies. Now when I stare at the ceiling, because the wall here is blood red instead of white, I see a tea-with-oranges yellow from the lamp and speckled-horse blue from the cloudy sky seeping in the window to meet the yellow. The colors kiss near the shadows of books piled nearly to collapse above the lamp. Instead of writing this poem, I lie back in my swivel chair, stare at the ceiling and remember how as a child in bed at night, I loved to watch the pattern of car headlights sweep across the wall and ceiling, the rectangular window shapes gifted with flight.

Instead of doing my exercises and getting on with my day, I am pretending to write a poem. A prose poem, with spruces, oaks and elms full of water droplets and mourning doves. Raindrops stipple puddles full of sky almost as white as the ceiling. Full of the reflections of wings. Sparrows fall slanting across the window from the cedars to the feeder looking like sudden heavy snow, looking for food on the empty feeder. Instead of filling the feeder, I watch my fingers poke at the chiclet keys with their little letters, bing bing bing bing. Instead of getting dressed and making breakfast, I sit in my nightgown with my bare feet on the chair legs, shivering and shrinking from the cold of this rainy April morning and watch as one by one, the little black squiggles of letters fill up the white page.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090415 (tax-day)-0844-1st
NaPoWriMo prompt from ReadWritePoem #15 for 4-15-09: "Instead of"

This is a first draft. If I revise it, I will post the revision above this version. so the newest version will always be on top.

The photo of the Chickadee is from Kensington Metropark on Good Friday. We rarely have chickadees at our feeder.

I've done several others poems from NaPoWriMo prompts but haven't had time to post them.

I Come From Trouble

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, for the "Where do you come from" prompt, for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

I Come From Trouble

White deer wandered through husks of burnt-out buildings,
browsing the new growth that sprang up after the fires and riots.
They'd fled into the river during the flames, somehow survived.
The gang from Royal Oak rounded up the deer for food,
but I hid a pair in the old zoo where I'd been living since
the trouble times. I hated to keep them captive; the place
resembled an ancient prison: small dark cells with no windows,
stalactites and stalagmites forming around the leaks in the roof,
but better that than eaten by the gangs. They showed up too well
in the woods and outer compounds, even at night. I blacked up
with char from the burned-over tree stumps. I gathered food
for the deer at night, let them loose in the inner chambers
where the hunger fiends couldn't spot them. The twenty-foot
chain-link fences with three strands of barbed wire
discouraged raids on what must have seemed to the gangs
like a hopeless jungle of weeds. I'd planted nettles and thorny
brambles on both sides of the fence and the moat of stinking swamp
was helpful too. They didn't realize that the dandelions,
burdocks, nettles and other weeds provided all the food
we needed, the deer and I. Though I couldn't see into the city,
I heard the gunfire and explosions, guessed at the gang war.
Heard the invasions, the Feds purging. Waited for silence,
And then waited some more. And here I am, with my companions
Snow, Ice and their baby, White Dove. We come from trouble
times. We came through flame and lived. I am a new woman;
call me Phoenix.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090413-1333-2b, 090413-1322-2a (first completed draft), 090412-1st
draft, unfinished

Note on the poem: this is for the NaPoWriMo challenge, "Where did you come from." I've written a number of "Where-did-I-come-from" poems, so I was looking for a different but related idea and yesterday, BB and I explored the old Zoo at Belle Isle where the white deer were kept captive after they were rounded up. The horrible, prison-like price and the fate of the deer (sold for food!) upset me and resonated, so I wrote this—it's "imaginary" but a metaphor of sorts—I
come from trouble—flame and fire. The fire, gangs riots and Feds are part of the history of Detroit. And Easter Sunday seemed like a good time for a rebirth image.

This is the first completed draft, what I wrote yesterday was only about half this and different. So there's a good chance there'll be more drafts and I will post them in the same post above the other during National Poetry month, anyway. That way, the newest version will always be at the top.